Force of Will
by Don'tArgueWithMissHepworth
Summary: "Caroline Hepworth was nettled. Uncompromisingly, categorically, demonstrably nettled to the core... overall, her situation rated high upon the "To Be Improved" scale. Moment of Truth spoilers. I own nothing, not even the computer I wrote this on.
1. Chapter 1

Caroline Hepworth was nettled. Uncompromisingly, categorically, demonstrably nettled to the core.

Diving into the undergrowth had been a simple and appealing enough idea. It was the closest hiding place that she could spring for, and had the advantage of being beneath a bush almost certainly thick enough to completely shield her from sight. Less evident, but equal in importance as far as Caroline was concerned, was the embracing congregation of nettles that sprang up cheerfully to enfold her as soon as she entered, also profiting from the bush's generous protection.

Nettles! The latest in a long series of discomforts to be countenanced and borne. The Gallian countryside was not, Caroline had rapidly concluded, everything that one would have expected from tourist prospectae. It contained very few smiling, waving folk with barrels of apple cider waiting for the parched passerby, and made up for this not entirely unforseen lack with an extraordinarily variegated range of low-slung, thorned flora and fauna whose chief goal in life appeared to be swiping murderously at one's eyes when one least expected it. Sophie, George and Thèo had all performed a stupendous volley of screams on discovering this tendency, a spectacle from which Caroline had been saved solely because her teeth were stuck tightly together with the mandatory daily spoonful of molasses when a clawed brown _something_ had grabbed for her face and swept away. While she was hardly the city-bound, primped young lady with whom many appeared to delight in confusing her, she still felt a mild shock each time they had to camp on thickly mudded ground because there was no dry land to be found for miles, or to fend off wolves in the tender small hours before daybreak. Nothing on the estates where she had explored with her various instructors had been properly _natural_, she now realised, unless it was also _desirable,_ and _picturesque_, too, while it was about it. Overall, she now concluded, as welts began to spread along her arms and legs, her situation rated high upon the "To Be Improved" scale.

Her fellow clandestine travellers also scattered at the sound of the heavy footsteps tramping through the patch of forest via which they planned to access the South, and from there negotiate the Channel. Caroline turned cautiously to confirm that they were safe, scrutinizing the area for their silhouettes, and was relieved that this took considerable effort. Sophie, who had been at the front of their party and heard the ominous noise first, had a hand clapped to George's mouth, dragging him behind an oak èo dived headlong into a shallow cave, scrambling to press himself against its wall. A pistol was clutched in his hand. She tried to catch his eye, shaking her head as emphatically as possible without rustling the plant's branches. In the past week, they had already left a scattered trail of unconscious soldiers and civilian Gallians as they made their way on foot towards the south. While she was thankful that as yet they hadn't needed to resort to silencing those who came upon them in a more drastic manner, she was unwilling to let the trend continue. They couldn't afford to draw attention to themselves.

A massive leather-booted foot stamped into Caroline's field of view, unexpected, and she narrowly missed biting her own tongue off. _Careless_, she chided herself. Regaining a shred of her control, she contemplated the boot, trying to judge from it the size and build of its owner. Before she could, the boot moved on and was replaced by another. Over the ringing of blood in her ears, she heard orders, snapped in Holmlandish: "Move over the area. Nobody is to exit."

_A restricted area? _Caroline chewed the inside of her lip, which had, over the last five days, been reduced to a mess of dead tissue and bleeding. What was special about this area in particular? If the area was being restricted now - and it must have done so some time today, given that they had been allowed entry undetected - something must have changed.

What could constitute such a development? Caroline longed for information, even the clipped and by nature uninformative missives that had come to her makeshift signalling booth in Divodorum. Even had they not been operating secretly, and constantly moving onward, however, their band could not possibly have been worse placed to received outside communication. According to Sophie, they were currently following the line of the Saint-Didier region of Montsacre, an area infamous for its untrustworthy terrain. So far, they had yet to come across a square half-mile that was less than filled with knobbly rises of stone and slippery pits stubbled with lichen. Despite the fact that the surface of the land seemed specifically designed to funnel water off to somewhere else - the wide, ruler-flat Draselle plains below came to mind - it was abundantly populated with a wide variety of trees, shrubs, mosses, and more alarmingly, snakes. Its dramatic lack of any even ground whatever made the zone completely unfit for habitation or travel, which was precisely why they had ventured into it as far north as possible. But what would Holmland forces want with such a route - and, an allied question of greater importance, why had they moved ahead of their invasion front?

The nettle stings began to bloom in full now, rounding into bright pink bumps that _itched_. She shifted, trying to apply pressure to an elbow where a particularly irritating clump of stings had appeared, but in the process her torso was nudged a little way along the ground.

It was a _very_ thick bush. The leaf litter beneath it was dry despite the night's fitful rain, and made a sound like paper tearing in a silent room, making her freeze in hushed alarm. Additionally, the nettles were now brushing the underside of her neck, softly, so softly that one could almost believe they meant no harm. Caroline grimaced.

The boot in front of her stomped off to join its predecessor beyond Caroline's field of view, followed by another, and another, and another four after that. A dozen troops moved past, inches from her nose, and clatterbashed off through the woods. Then silence. She risked a minute turn of her head. The nettles caressed her jawline as she did so - ignoring them was becoming more difficult now. George and Sophie's outlines were just visible in the pattern of the tree-trunks, heads turned toward the direction of the infantrymen's egress. She thought she saw George give a minute nod, then the pair emerged from their hiding place. Thèo, too, slunk into vision, his pistol still half-aloft as though he couldn't quite persuade himself to put it aside. Caroline gave a mental sigh of relief, swatted away the nettles and stood up.

And that was when everything went wrong.

Aubrey Fitzwilliam was standing in front of her with an expression that mixed arrogance, superliciousness and something that Caroline had trouble dissociating in her mind from the concept of perfection.


	2. Chapter 2

Caroline did nothing, which was counterintuitive. Several courses of action presented themselves, by none of which she was particularly taken. Momentarily, they faced each other, frozen, while in some back recess of her conscious, she reluctantly entertained the awareness that she was doing a faultless impression of a stunned rabbit. "Hello, Aubrey," she said cautiously.

"Hello, Caroline," he replied, ingeniously, with a curiously prepossessing combination of a frown and a smirk.

_Well. _In her peripheral vision, she saw George emerge tentatively from the shadows and perform the perfect double-take. It was only with difficulty that Caroline resisted the urge to turn and hail him as reinforcements.

A crunch of bracken beneath jackboots._ The soldiers. Tarnation and damn._ There was a horrible moment when George seemed still on the verge of calling to Aubrey and exposing them to the Holmlanders, a moment when Caroline's brain turned on its castors and bolted itself immovably into battle stations. "Aubrey, could you have been followed?"

"No. At least, I hope not. Surely not." His jaw shifted as though he were trying to convince himself of this, which was nearly as good as an admission of neglect. Typical.

There was another brackeny crackle, closer this time. The pusillanimous sectors of her brain ordered her in firm tones to scurry away into the wilderness, far too forcefully to be denied. She seized Aubrey's sleeve and dragged him into a sort of miniature crevasse in the rocky ground, concealed thinly by shrubs. "Holmland patrol," she breathed shortly, scanning the gaps between branches for any movement. "The area–"

"–is restricted," he finished. "I heard. Evasive action?"

"Aubrey, we're cowering in what could at its best be politely deemed a ditch," she snapped, aware that her vocabulary was doubling in average word length, as it tended to do when she was peeved. "I think this classifies as evasion, don't you?"

He snickered infuriatingly. "You could be right."

With immense firmness of purpose, Caroline avoided even the remotest of thoughts regarding the last time they had been in this kind of proximity. Or about the fact that her face was doubtless developing an impressive array of crimson nettle welts. She ground her teeth, shifted her footing slightly and felt a _crack_. Marvellous. Now she only had one secure toehold. Some cautious, quiet probing with her other foot found her another section of rock to perch on. In the meantime, she had lost sight of the clearing. She peeped between the stalks and, seeing nothing, relaxed a little.

Then a lone Holmlandish soldier strode into the clearing. Aloof, his back ramrod-straight and moustache impeccably waxed, there could be no doubt that this particular specimen of the enemy troops was on duty, on the lookout and thus very much a threat. Caroline kept as still as possible, to the point of slowing her breathing.

Aubrey, on the other hand, was performing some kind of complicated contortion, the objective of which she eventually realised was to draw his pistol from its holster. Planning to discourage him as she had done Thèo, Caroline attempted to catch his eye, but too late. In one neat, cracking shot, the soldier was felled.

Aubrey shoved the gun back into position and scrabbled to stand. "There. That takes care of that." He offered Caroline a hand up, which she refused out of habit rather than conscious thought. She wondered if she could pinch herself without his noticing, settling for sinking her teeth into her tongue instead. The resulting pang was enough to confirm that she was awake, and to triplicate her confusion. "Aubrey, why did you do that?"

He looked politely surprised. "Pardon?"

"Why did you kill that patroller?" She struggled to her feet on the uneven ground and looked him directly in the eye, which proved inconclusive as per normal. "It was unnecessary."

"Callous, even," said a voice - George's - from across the clearing. He had his arm around Sophie, who was even more pallid than normal, and looked as shocked as Caroline felt.

"Good shot, though," Thèo put in. Caroline's flare of anger at this remark abated slightly when she saw that the Gallian was shivering. She guessed that it was bravado as much as anything else that made him so insensitive - months of identification with the Holmland army would mean that recent developments were quite as confusing for him as they were for the rest of them, if for different reasons.

The five of them converged uneasily around the patroller's body. Apart from the large dark stain marring his jacket, he looked like a waxwork, fresh painted. Sophie gave a huge shudder. "We should leave here. Now."

"How, though?" Caroline nibbled at her lip. "We've been fairly well looped in, as far as I can guess. Cordoning off an area like this wouldn't be hard - most of it's too dense or steep for us to get through anyway. All they need to have done is posted across the major thoroughfares."

George used his free arm to scratch his nose. "What I don't understand is how they knew we were here," he frowned. "Any thoughts, old man?"

They turned as one to Aubrey, who had been unusually silent throughout their conference. "And what happened, in any case?" asked Caroline. "Why aren't you still in Holmland with von Stralick?"

He fixed his eyes on hers with unnerving suddenness. They were black today. She terminated that train of thought before it could properly pull out of its station, to prevent mishaps. Aubrey was still looking at her with ineluctable focus, making her immensely glad that she had done so. "Our plan fell through, I'm afraid," he said. "Von Stralick was working with the Holmlanders from the start. I managed to get away before the Enlightened Ones could catch me."

Thèo grunted. "The Enlightened Ones? But they–"

"They were one of Tremaine's side plots," Aubrey said grimly. "A way for Tremaine to reel us in. Convince us by telling us they were in Craddock's contacts. That's how they managed to remain out of the Holmlanders' clutches - they were in cahoots all along."

Caroline was stunned. This was a blow, an impossible allegation - but at the same time, she remembered that von Stralick was von Grolman's subordinate. If the mentor could be so convincing a pretender, it would be foolish to expect any less from the pupil. This also explained von Stralick's strangely selfless behaviour in recent times. She had been right at the beginning - the Holmlander wasn't at all altruistic. As for Madame Zelinka, they had no word but her own that she was anti-Holmland. She groaned inwardly. It had been too good to be true - why would a group of powerful magicians refuse the safety and potential power present in the opportunity to join the ranks of their countryman? It was probably down to the Enlightened Ones that they were trapped in a restricted area. And now, as a result of their foolhardiness and gullibility, Caroline and her friends were on the verge of capture. For a moment, she saw the consequences of this, like concentric ripples in a pond - the downfall of Sir Darius, leading to the rise of the Royalist party, who would deny sense and pump more resources into the war until the entire stock of Albion, both human and financial, was worn into ruin. The resulting success of Holmland and slaughter of Albion's international allies. Doctor Tremaine's achievement of the Ritual of the Way. "We have to get back to Albion," she said aloud, perhaps with more urgency than she had intended.

"I think I can help there," Aubrey grinned, and Caroline was so relieved that she very nearly did something she would regret.

Fortunately, George interrupted her thoughts: "How? If Caroline's right, and she usually is," _Thank you, George,_ "then we shan't be able to just walk out. Unless you can magic us all invisible or somesuch, we seem to be in a very pretty pickle."

It was incredible. Within seconds of Aubrey's telling them he had a plan, all of them assumed that he would pull off some harebrained scheme that would save them and the world, to the degree that even George was quipping about his doubts. Thèo and Sophie were watching Aubrey eagerly, perhaps to see if he would transform into a pumpkin. Caroline found herself believing that he might just pull them through again. With luck. And the odd false start or three, no doubt.

Aubrey stuck his hands in his pockets, drifting toward the side of the clearing. They followed him like a clutter of ducklings as he slithered through a gap in the trees, vaulted over a well-mossed tree trunk and walked for about five minutes. Not once did they see a Holmlandish guard. Caroline caught George's eye and they fell into step together. "What do you think?"

He curled an eyebrow downward. "I never know what to think of Aubrey until I know what he's up to."

"Which is like saying you never know what to think of him at all."

"Precisely."

"Even so, don't you think he's a little - well, slightly - _odd_, at the moment?" George stared at her. "More odd than usual, I mean," she clarified.

He narrowed his eyes. "Killing that guard. That was unusual. Apart from that, he seems just as odd as usual. Maybe slightly less than usual, actually. You do realise he hasn't spouted one bit of magical jargon yet? Or tripped over his own feet in your vicinity, not even a little?"

It took a few seconds for the latter comment to register. "I beg your pardon?" she asked venemously. _George, you are on thin ice. The ice you are walking on is so incommensurably thin that it may break even without further assistance. So for heavens' sake, and your own, talk about the weather. Really._

"Caroline, I realise that I'm not the brains of our unit, and that you are no doubt currently plotting to murder me for saying this, but nonetheless I'm not a complete dullard. And I've spent enough time in the company of young ladies to pick up a bit of the language."

She tried out her glare. It had never, as far as she could remember, actually worked on George, but was worth a try. He returned it evenly, with the faint smile that suggested he was holding his tongue for his own amusement rather than out of respect for her wishes. There went that tack, then. She moved back into cold imperviousness. "George, if you are planning to speak coherently at any time in the next millennium, do let me know." Not her best line.

The smile turned into a grin. "Look here, old girl, I know you're not exactly a typical young lady, but nonetheless, _to speak to you outside_ is one of those irregular verbs. _We_ speak outside, _you_ have a tête-à-tête,_ they_ finally s–"

"George, you thick-skulled idiot, if you do not shut your mouth this instant I will personally ensure that you are never again able to stand up straight." Much to Caroline's surprise, she hadn't said this. It was Sophie, who gave George an impressively emphatic glower.

He reddened. "Thick-skulled idiot?"

"Only a little bit. Now and then."

"Whenever I try to make any sense of Caroline and Aubrey, you mean?"

"Yes, George, exactly."

He humphed, but said nothing. Sophie crossed in front of him to walk with Caroline. "Aubrey _is _acting oddly," she whispered in her ear. "But he has had a shock. Several shocks."

Caroline arched an eyebrow, but not even the faintest shadow of a smile crossed her Gallian friend's grave face. Before she could resume the initial topic of their coversation, though, Aubrey drew to a halt in a totally unremarkable patch of forest. "George," he called, "Do you still remember how to fly a hot air balloon?"

George opened his mouth to reply, but no sound came out and he settled for nodding slowly. Chuckling, Aubrey reached upward an caught hold of a rope looped on a sturdy branch, which, when pulled, made a large basket drop out of the air.

Thèo took a step backward, stumbled, and sat on the ground rather suddenly. "Fitzwilliam," he murmered, "You are utterly impossible."

"Correct," Aubrey grinned, busying himself with something on the side of the basket. "All aboard," he called, and waved them over as though he did this every day.

Caroline acquiesced, feeling more dreamlike than ever. Looking up through the scraggly trees, she saw a swingeing yellow-and-purple striped ball bobbling above the basket. She considered asking Aubrey where on Earth he had found such a thing - then she saw the words _Von Grolman's Pleasure Park Welcomes You_ emblazoned ostentatiously in Holmlandish on the balloon's side. So they were about to escape from deadly enemy troops in a pleasure park ride. Thank heavens. If Aubrey's plans had made actual sense, she would have been genuinely worried.

The Delroys looked less confident as they climbed into the rocking basket, Sophie holding its side so tightly that her knuckles whitened. George ran a hand through his hair and blew out his cheeks as he examined the controls. "Of course, now I come to think of it, I'm definitely more comfortable with hot air baloons whose instructions are in Albionish," he blustered.

Aubrey cocked his head to look at Caroline. This time, perhaps because George had made her expect it, she noticed his lack of awkwardness toward her. The more melodramatic areas of her consciousness regretted this. Perhaps she had overestimated the significance of her actions. _Or perhaps,_ a whining voice in the back of her mind suggested, _you simply overestimated his regard for you._ She clenched her teeth and met his gaze evenly. "Any chance that one of your father's friends is an expert ballooner?" he enquired.

She considered Lord Easton, the spherical, shiny-cheeked bank manager who had visited on several occasions to engulf an impressive number of cognacs successively and left in the small hours of the morning, but decided against mentioning him. It was the kind of remark liable to distract Aubrey, and they were pressed for time. How long until another soldier passed through? "Not hot air ballooners, no. But I can read Holmlandish, and my mother has taught me to fly several other aircraft, so I should be able to get the knack. George?"

"Be my guest," he said with a flourishing bow.

The others began to discuss something as she turned her attention to the controls. At one point, she thought she heard Aubrey say something about a compass. She shut out the sounds of the conversation, focussing on the buttons and levers before her. There was a small numeral next to each device - after some consideration, she turned the spatulate dial numbered _Eins_. There was a promising _whump_ of gas above her. As she continued to fuss with nozzles and meters, Caroline let the back of her mind stray to other issues, making use of the solid, crystalline structure of rationalism formed by the physical task entrusted to her to sort out the inchoate mess of facts. Cogs whirred in her head. The Enlightened Ones' betrayal. If they were Holmland agents, that had to mean that their position in Stalsfrieden was known to Tremaine. And since they were so close, that must mean that he controlled their actions.

But why, then, would they have blown up the von Grolman base? Perhaps there had been something else in the base, something that Tremaine needed to keep hidden. But why would he keep it there when he had his own private base independent of the military? And why had the Enlightened Ones not taken them directly to Tremaine once they were discovered but instead left open the possibility of their escape?

In another mental compartment, she examined Aubrey's recent behaviour. Killing the patroller, an infraction of everything he believed. Appearing unexpectedly, without any sign of discomfort or unease around her, which even if she didn't flatter herself was still, well, peculiar. His clothes were clean, she realised. Hadn't they been dirtied in their escape from the Stalsfrieden mission? Yes, there had certainly been particles of dust and mud on his jacket. Which she had noticed, by virtue of being a keen observer, following the edicts of the defence. Vigilance at all times. Yes. So: where had he found a new Holmlandish uniform?

Unless the Enlightened Ones had given him one. They all wore Holmland uniforms, she remembered. Stolen, they'd said, but she guessed that they had been given gladly by the Holmlandish forces. So Aubrey must have returned to the Enlightened Ones' hideout after leaving. And appropriated the hot air balloon from within the Stalsfrieden base in order to escape from the Holmlanders' clutches? Caroline was stymied, so returned her mind to the task at hand.

She tugged a lever, which jarred. Hm. It felt as though it needed some persuading. As she knelt to see what the difficulty was, she saw that the lever's base had rusted away almost entirely. That would need some dealing with.

Except if Aubrey had already used the balloon, wouldn't he have dealt with it?

And why had they not seen a single Holmlandish trooper on random surveillance, excepting the unwitting firebrand in the clearing?

Pieces of intelligence were floating in Caroline's mind, fogging her vision. Now they began to develop and clear.

She bit her lip as the crystaline structure resolved itself into a clear and unwelcome realisation. Standing, she brushed her hands off airily and joined the others, slipping one hand into a pocket to find the grip of her revolver. The idea of another cold-blooded shooting, so close after the death of the Holmlander, made her hands clammy. How could he possibly have done it - just pulled out his gun and...

Pulled out his gun and...

_Pulled out his gun and handed it to her_, still warm, in the heat of things, in Stalsfrieden. The moment was indelible, as were the facts. And yes, here it was - under her fingers, the barrel with its cross-hatched stripes, Aubrey's Mark IV. Where had he found another top-mark Albionish firearm? She needed more information. Caroline placed a casual hand on Aubrey's shoulder and waited, forcing herself to remain calm, for him to look up.

He did so. In this light, his eyes were brown and very shiny. _I wish I hadn't noticed that._

"You're not Aubrey Fitzwilliam," she said.

Buffeting noises, and lancing sunlight in her eyes. Caroline slung her way back into consciousness to see that they were flying - she tried to determine where they were precisely, but realised that she couldn't because of the rope binding her. Her wrists were tied to one of the corner suspending ropes of the balloon, and her arms were tied to her sides. Craning to see over her shoulder, she saw Thèo, Sophie and George similarly bound, still semiconscious, and the person who wasn't Aubrey standing at the controls. She realised that she hadn't even seen him move before he knocked her out. _I should have had the gun to him straight away_, she thought regretfully.

She had a very nasty feeling about this. With another look down, Caroline confirmed her own fears. They were floating across the distinctive, marshy landscape of central Marchmaine. To the northeast.

To Holmland.


	3. Chapter 3

"Who are you?"

As post-blackout opening salvos went, this was appalling, but Caroline allowed herself a few inches' slack. After all, she could have satisfied convention and asked the perennial"where am I?"

Non-Aubrey barely flicked a glance at her, which was infuriating. It was a quick glance. _Very _quick. Exceedingly quick, in fact. Too quick to be human, surely. She filed that for consideration while mulling over recent events. Memories flickered in her head - the Holmlandish soldier, the rusted lever. And Aubrey's double, who hadn't done any magic, which brought her back to wondering what - who? - he might be.

She took a wild swing at the likeliest possibility to present itself."You're a golem?"

The creature nodded Aubrey's head, in Aubrey's manner - a sharp flick down, followed by a tentative upward bob, as though he wasn't at all positive that he was right. Disconcerted she saw that the hands waving over the balloon's controls did so in an undoubtedly Aubreyish fashion also. The existing nasty feelings Caroline harbored multiplied in triplicate. "Who are you?" she repeated, more casually this time.

"Why, I'm –" He seemed to catch himself before continuing, "I am Aubrey Fitzwilliam. The second one."

"The second? His son?" A purposefully stupid assumption. Caroline was rather proud of it, particularly when it elicited a reaction. Non-Aubrey turned to face her directly, smirking.

"His _son_? Don't be ridiculous, Caroline."

"That will be _Miss Hepworth,_ thank you. _Lieutenant_ Hepworth, in fact. You say you're not his son? You've certainly a remarkable resemblance. You've got the Fitzwilliam jaw, and no mistake."

"A duplicate tends to resemble the original piece," it snickered. "And while you're sorting through the implications of that, I will state here and now that there's no use in trying to _keep me talking_ or anything of the sort. The balloon is ensorcelled to fly itself. So talk away, you shan't change a thing."

It was this final claim that alerted Caroline to precisely what was jarring in his speech. "You speak like him," she said slowly. "Like Doctor Tremaine." _And I _will_ keep you talking, _she added in the safety of her own mind, _because it can't be too much longer before the others are fully conscious again. A golem you may be, but can you look in four directions at once?_

The golem settled itself easily against the controls, grinning at her. "And you're as clever as I - as Fitzwilliam thinks you are."

That was an easy one. "Almost certainly cleverer." She savoured the sparring for a short pause before pressing in again. "Why do you seem so reminiscent of Tremaine, then? Is that a filial resemblance? I assume he's your creator."

Another nod, much more certain and quite unlike Aubrey's. "He moulded the clay, yes. But my mind is mine. Is Fitzwilliam's, that is. Of course. I am him, you understand–"

"You certainly babble the way he does."

The creature turned away, but not before she saw that its cheeks had reddened. Caroline wondered how it did that - wasn't it paint, or plaster, the surface skin layer? It shouldn't change colour naturally. There must be magic at work, more than in a normal golem, surely. Its mimicry of Aubrey's personality must be magical.

Or could it be simple psychology? A golem had a consciousness that allowed it to act with some degree of initiative. Maybe a talented magician could alter and shape this consciousness. Convince the golem that it _was,_ on some level, Aubrey Fitzwilliam, while simultaneously leaving it in the full knowledge that it was a created thing. Maybe. Caroline wished she knew more about this sort of thing. She wished that she could talk to somebody who did. She wished Sophie was awake.

Which she wasn't. Caroline scanned her friends' faces, hoping for a change in their conditions. Heads bobbing, they seemed still to be for the most part unconscious, though George groaned intermittently. She wondered if he might not be near enough to waking for her to jolt him awake. With a higher, clearer voice than she might normally use, then, Caroline did her best to attract the golem's notice: "I say! You might at least explain your part in Tremaine's scheme. Seeing as we can't get away, I mean." Banking on Aubrey's self-assurance and confidence struck her as a risky bet, but she pressed on: "How long has he been planning this? Ever since our inception at Stalsfrieden?"

Non-Aubrey rounded on her with a taunting chuckle. "You're not a chess player, are you, _Lieutenant_? Card games, as many as you like, but he's never seen you play chess. You can tell so much about a person from their behavior at leisure - card players rely on luck and rapid decision making. Doctor Tremaine, on the other hand - he thinks in projected futures, eighteen moves ahead. He's been planning a weapon like me for months, altering his ideas to keep up with developments. I am only the latest component in the game –"

"The attempted duplication of the Crown Prince last year being another," Caroline finished for him. Secretly, she was highly disconcerted by the term _weapon_. "So Tremaine proposed to return you to Albion as the Prime Minister's son. Not the cleverest of plots, I'd say. Not after he'd ensured that you - that Aubrey - would get a hostile reception."

Another chuckle. Caroline could swear that the creature's voice deepened to mirror that of its master, which, while it might mean the golem's mental faculties were unravelling, was scanty comfort. Confusing the golem as to its identity was be all very well, but if it turned into a full-blown Tremaine double on the spot as a result, things might develop very decidedly toward the 'inclement' end of the spectrum. She took some reassurance from the golem's normal speech, was unchanged as it rejoined: "What could be better? I would have cemented my credentials with you by casting aspersions on the loyalty of von Stralick's little band of thieves, used that trust to gain entry to Albion. Under the guise of a sorrowful, misguided son, it would be easy to kill your damned Prime Minister - probably your Crown Prince, too - and have it all blamed upon me and the Holmlanders, even on the Holmlanders the government had been counting as its allies. Albion would have no way to turn back from the war then. The battlefields would fill, my fellow golems would destroy all of your weak-chinned countrymen, and he would achieve immortality."

"You'd die, though," said Caroline flatly, to see what this turned up. _George, wake up. _She wondered how long it had been between the golem's incapacitating her and her friends' being likewise knocked unconscious. Not this long, surely? Unless there had been a struggle. But with its lightning speed, the golem would not have stood for much clever footwork. _Wake up_.

Non-Aubrey laughed, an unpleasant hissing little laugh. "Die? Caroline, dear, I can't _die!_ I am a golem. Even a bullet to my head wouldn't do much damage."

Trying bravado again, Caroline gave a cool laugh of her own. "Would you care to demonstrate?"

"I'm not stupid, silly girl," non-Aubrey barked. It sounded more like Tremaine than ever.

"Really." Bravado was addictive. Vaguely, she remembered Lady Rose saying something about this, a long time ago. A warning? But this was good. Caroline felt sure of it. "Then perhaps you would care to explain to me why, in order to get to Albion and assassinate however many members of the government you can lay Aubrey's hands on, you are _flying the other way_?"

This felt like victory. Of course, it didn't change anything, but a wrongfooted enemy was preferable to a surefooted one. Except, she noticed, he didn't look wrongfooted. Quite the opposite, in fact - rather fetchingly arrogant. She put a stop to that thought.

"Perhaps you'd care to explain why you consistently mishear my use of the conditional? Our plan would have succeeded, were it not for the fact that it _has _- present tense - developed, Hepworth. Now that we've mastered duplication, you're hardly even a temporary distraction."

Oh.

Caroline bit her lip. This was be the problem with bravado, she guessed. It was a drug, it impaired neural activity. Back to logic, then. "You plan to duplicate the four of us."

"Very good, girl. You're improving. As are my chances of success - it would have been difficult, time-consuming to take pains convincing you that I was Fitzwilliam. Besides –"

"Difficult?" she interrupted, thinking hard. "I thought you were an exact duplicate. Shouldn't it have come naturally? Or magically?"

_Ha_. The golem glared. She counted this as one up to her team, and to logic. "I am a duplicate, stupid. But I am a duplicate of Fitzwilliam as he was in Stalsfrieden, when he was copied. New events draw me away from that state. Fitzwilliam wouldn't be doing these things. I have had to improvise."

A quiet, sustained moan from George's direction drew Caroline's attention, a fact that she struggled not to show. She had a nasty suspicion that the golem would not take kindly to being outnumbered. Better give George a chance to recuperate as much as possible. And to alert him to the situation, if she could?

"You're saying that you are a duplicate of Aubrey as he was in von Grolman's base?" Caroline clarified, unnecessarily loudly. "When on Earth did they duplicate him? Should that sort of magic not have taken some time?"

"Not once the magic was prepared - it happened in a flash," smirked the creature. Its smirk metamorphosed into a grin, the grin into a guffaw that led to a prolonged, disconcertingly unstable laugh. "Bertie would never forgive me for that," he gasped, tears of mirth trickling from his eyes. Slightly sickened, not to mention baffled, Caroline almost forgave herself for her next action.

She shrunk away from the thing.

It leered at her. The expression made it seem far less like Aubrey than anything it had said, anything it had done until now, a galvanising thought. Caroline squared her shoulders and caught Aubrey's eyes in the golem's face, straining against her tied wrists in the hope of making herself look fiercer. Some part of this - perhaps the fierceness - seemed efficacious. It slunk back slightly, calculating. Seeing it begin to turn from her again, Caroline struck out for its attention. "How do you mean, _in a flash_?"

Caroline had never seen Aubrey giggle, and doubted rather that he often did so, even outside her earshot, but what his doppelganger now gave was unmistakeably a giggle nonetheless. "_A flash_," it repeated. "A camera flash. Do you understand, Caroline?"

"No." A blunt reply, in the hope that the creature would elaborate.

It did so. "Doctor Tremaine invented a camera that takes a person's soul."

"The Soul Stealer!" Caroline expostulated. In the corner of her eye, she saw George lift his head and tip her a fraction of a wink. Thank heavens. Something of her relief must have appeared on her face, for George widened his eyes and mouthed _Keep Him Occupied_. A good plan, one to which she had no alternative in any case. Caroline spared Sophie and Thèo, on the far side of the basket, a careful glance as she continued speaking, only half-listening to herself."We always suspected your master was behind the Soul Stealer's activities in Lutetia. But I fail to see what his camera has to do with it. Aubrey's soul wasn't taken from him."

"Caroline, Caroline, I keep telling you. Doctor Tremaine is not a one-scheme man. He made the original camera last year, as an idle side venture. Since then, he has improved it, made a developed version - one that merely copies its subject's soul."

Again, Caroline wished for the second opinion of somebody who knew about magical dealings. Was such a thing possible? It had to be admitted that the evidence seemed to suggest that it was. "But the copies are imperfect, yes? Crude, rough around the edges. Skin deep. Like yourself."

She'd struck a golem, glowering, shook its head furiously. Its movements were less Aubreyish, now, following in the path of its speech. "I _was_ a perfect copy! I –"

"You?" Caroline forced herself into a light laugh, channeling every hope she had for the glimmer of hope she saw. "You can barely even concentrate on one thing at a time! No wonder Tremaine made the balloon automatic. Why, you haven't even noticed that Sophie's working her way free behind you..." Sophie was on the far side of the basket, opposite both her and George. Now if only she played it well enough...

Caroline had succeeded only once in taking Master Wu by surprise. She had tried, of course, dodging and feinting in their combat lessons, leaping on him sidelong when he should have been under the impression the she was winded or exhausted. When she was young enough, she'd hidden beneath tables and chairs, and - once - inside the Hepworths' hollow pianoforte stool. To this day she had no idea how her tutor had known to sit on the chair, trapping her in stunned silence until her humility levels had returned to a point at which she could bear to call out. No, none of her cunning plots had ever worked. The one occasion upon which she had defeated Master Wu was not owing to artifice or prior planning at all. A relatively recent victory, it had occurred when her old master had returned to Albion, in order to pay his respects as her father's funeral. In the subsequent days, he offered Caroline the chance to refine some of the techniques he'd taught her, a timely opportunity that she couldn't have refused. Their reunion however was curtailed by Caroline's squarely flooring the master only moments after commencing combat – not having met Caroline since she was eleven, Master Wu had mis-estimated not her wits, but simply her size. One kick, her right leg revolving a smooth one hundred and eighty degrees to catch the man beneath his chin and topple him. Even Caroline herself had been stunned. Stunned enough to emboss the event into the very fibres of her mind.

The golem had only tied her hands.

Non-Aubrey's face fluttered infinitesimally between dismay, uncertainty, anger and skepticism. Caroline masked her calculation of these factors with a brew of relief, triumph and apprehension. She saw, as the inscrutable movement of a series of muscles, the golem twist to look over its shoulder, and caught George's eye. His face looked strained as he nodded back, waiting for her lead.

There was a tiny moment when the golem's face was turned so that it could still see Caroline, but not yet focus on Sophie and register her continuing unconsciousness. Caroline saw it as a cog tipping, tilting, just before one spoke fell between the two with which it was destined to meet.

A _click_ as the cog tipped over. She nodded in absolute certainty, and George let out a cry, a thunderous, incoherent, attention-drawing cry that seemed to pull the entire sky towards it.

The golem's reaction seemed to happen in half-speed, as though it were moving through treacle. One arm flew up as it began to turn on George, its left foot lifting from the ground while the other acted as a pivot - a perfect frieze of instability. Caroline acted without conscious thought: one kick, her right leg revolving a smooth one hundred and eighty degrees to catch the creature in the chest. Rising as it was from the ground, its clay weight worked against it to propel the thing over and across the edge of the basket. A bullet to the head was one thing, a drop of several thousand feet another entirely.

Golems don't scream. The balloon was too high up, in too great an air current, for any impact to be audible. There was nothing but the low sigh of gas flaring above them, the sight of Aubrey's doomed shock burned onto her retinas, and a whistling breeze.

George met her eyes cautiously, as though he wasn't sure what he might see there. Whatever he did see seemed to reassure him. "Nicely done there, old girl."

"George," she sighed, while struggling the glimmer of a smile that seemed determined to spread treacherously over her face, "The only thing that could make my day worse would be for you to resume calling me _old girl_. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"

Nodding, he bit his lip. "The only thing? So being trapped in a wayward air balloon powered by forces out of control wouldn't be problematic?"

"Of course it would, but it's already the case. D'you suppose Sophie could do something?"

"I'm sure I don't know. Anyway, she's still unconscious."

Caroline gave a tiny sigh. "I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with M."

George turned to regard the view over his shoulder. "Mud," he said shortly.

"Your turn."

He clicked his tongue on his teeth. "There isn't really much else I can see. S for sky, G for grass... B for balloon - or basket, I suppose –"

"P for peril?"

He shrugged as well as he was able. "Of course, on the upside, we know that the Enlightened Ones didn't betray us."

This? After all that had just happened, George chose _this_ to discuss? It seemed reasonable. Logical. Weighing pros and cons, instead of sulking. She liked that. "And the real Aubrey is out there, still. Somewhere."

"Somewhere," he echoed.

They drifted.


	4. Chapter 4

Getting the balloon down was something that Caroline knew she would spend many sleepless nights hard at work to forget. Even once they were safely aground - "Aswamp," George commented, as they squelched their way gingerly through the fields - things continued to look grim. While nobody actually voiced their feelings, Caroline knew they were all wondering how on Earth they could manage to make up for the days of travel rendered pointless by their balloon journey. As though this were not sufficiently bad news, their new position meant that they would need to spend several more days in order to skirt around the battlefront, which was once more between them and their destination. The pillars of ashen haze on the horizon were never-ceasing, a horrible reminder of the lives that would be wasted because of their delay. A never-changing view of smudgy sky made it seem as if they were walking, not forwards, but down, toward some inescapable gloomy fate. The thought of passing battlefields and facing the stench of death made a harrowing prospect as daylight grew wavy and died.

Unable to stop and camp on the inches-deep mud, the four continued walking until, close to midnight, the slushy fields turned into tall evergreen forest. Wordless, they spread their palliasses on the ground and slept. Nobody had any intention of mounting watch that night.

Caroline awoke to the sound of somebody painstakingly extricating themself from a sleeping bag. This was closely followed by the sound of someone painstakingly tiptoeing across the small clearing, and painstakingly tripping face-first over a tree root. Caroline raised her head to see Sophie, pink-faced and cursing fluently under her breath in Gallian. Impressed, Caroline began to file away the most useful of these words for later use, wriggling from her palliasse and mouthed a _good morning_ to Sophie, who pulled herself up with the aid of a low-slung branch.

They turned as one to the boys, who were stretched out in an adjacent clearing and seemed quite dead to the world, and an unexpected wicked smile materialised across Sophie's features. Caroline watched, uncertain of her friend's plan, as the slender Gallian glided toward the boys' clearing, leaning on a tree some feet from where they slept. Sophie turned back to Caroline and winked, her impishness giving a moment's ghostly impression of the infant Sophie's features. Then she said, in a carrying but not unreasonably loud voice, "Breakfast, anybody?"

George started awake so dramatically that he nearly folded in half.

Some time later, fortified by molasses and toast, the four of them idled around the glowing remainder of their campfire as the sun rose. Glumly, Caroline surveyed her troops: Sophie, gouging at a piece of deadwood with a stone; Thèo, head on fists, either dozing or else tangled very deeply in thought. And –

"George, what are you doing?"

After some minutes' scrabbling in his kitbag, George had pulled a scrap of wooly material, vaguely recognisable from this distance as a careworn sock, from the depths and was performing some complex ritual with its aid. Thèo and Sophie looked up at her voice, Sophie dropping the wood and stone with a clatter and stretching to peer over George's shoulder. "Darning," she explained in a low voice. "It is what his father does when he is worried."

George cast a sharp look around the group, but it was several seconds before he laid down the sock and faced them with a flush in his cheeks that made Caroline suspect that Sophie had, with her usual journalistic acuity, hit the nail bang to rights upon the head. "How'd you know that?" he asked gruffly.

Sophie put a hand on his shoulder with an expression that spoke volumes, all of which made Caroline feel very much an intruder. She was on the point of turning her gaze away when Sophie tossed her curls with a quirked smile. "You letters, of course," she said lightly. "You have mentioned it."

There seemed nothing else to be said. A breeze started up, a prelude which whipped through the trees until it was teased out into a full symphony, puffing the fire's embers out and tugging at their collars. In the midst of this, Thèo unfolded in full for the first time that morning, sitting upright to glare at his sister. "You're miserable, aren't you," he obseved blankly in Gallian, then switched to Albionish: "All of you, you are utterly miserable. And for what? Because we have been put a little off our course!"

_Why, of all the ignorant effrontery __– _Caroline flared up despite herself. "Yes, Thèo, only four whole days off course. Do you remember? The four days during which we had more or less to _drag_ you across hill and dale? The four days' worth of rations wasted? The four days wasted which, incidentally, could be the difference between winning the war or not?"

Her vehemence had more of an effect than she'd bargained for: Thèo was on his feet in an instant. "You had to _drag_ me because I knew that _walking_ the whole way over Gallia would be a stupid waste of time–"

She was taller than him, once she leapt up, the wind making her hair flurry like a lion's mane. "A waste of time? Unlike the last four days and the time we'll have to spend recouping our losses, by which you seem unconcerned. And by the way, "miserable" is a bit rich, coming from the bleeding heart of the company!"

George waved a hand indistinctly, as though to stave off a physical aggressor. "Steady on, now, Caroline -"

"Steady on!" She rounded on him. "Steady on, while this idiot explains how trying to prevent the Holmlandish invasion of Albion is a waste of time?"

"He's not an idiot," said Sophie, quiet but firm.

"Really. He's doing an excellent impression of one, then. To think that I spent half of yesterday saving his hide –"

She stared. "He is my brother!"

"Then maybe it's time he started acting like he had half your backbone," Caroline heard herself snarl. Thèo made a strangled movement, as though on the brink of lashing out, but it was George who dealt her a drubbing, in his stolid way: "Caroline, what should we do?"

An incorporeal trickle of something cold and wet percolated through her brain, a thing that felt like shame. "We should," she began uncertainly. _What would Aubrey do?_, she knew, was George's real question. She didn't know the answer, any more than she knew how she had managed to secure herself a non-substantive status as Aubrey's second in command. _Think._ The rumbles of war echoed from the south, so dim that they were nearly imperceptible. _Step by step. What would Aubrey do?_

_Aubrey would prevaricate._ She sucked at her teeth. "We should make up for lost time," she improvised. "Thèo's right, walking was a stupid idea -_ but _we'd done it before," she added, as Thèo's chest puffed maddeningly. "We'd proven that it worked. What we need is something faster." She began to pace. "Ideas?"

George shrugged. "Somebody has to state the obvious. Motorcar? Truck?"

"No roads," Thèo pointed out. "And a motorcar would be searched by the army at the front. By both armies."

"The balloon," Sophie said. "It travelled four days' worth of walking in a few hours."

"But it's broken, and Tremaine's spell means that it would only take us northwards," said Caroline, hating how defeatist that sounded. "Flying would be ideal, though," she went on, trying to formulate a plan. "If only we could signal for a dirigible like the one that brought us here."

"If we could signal, we wouldn't have to get to Albion in the first place," muttered Thèo, whom all of them ignored.

"What about an ornithopter?" George suggested. "A Falcon, or one of the Hawk 60 series, either of them take a enough passengers to hold us and the rest of the Delroy family."

"And are in common use by Holmander battle scouts," followed Sophie.

Caroline felt a faint twingeing at the back of her spine. She had an odd premonition that this was going somewhere, somewhere meaningful. The right somewhere. "Could we commandeer one from the Holmlanders' rear camps?"

There was a shocked bubble of silence while all of them contemplated the pros and cons lists presenting themselves. Then Thèo grumbled, "Not unless one of us has powers of invisibility and has kept them a secret."

They looked at him, Caroline with torture in mind. Then George sat bolt upright and stared at her, then at Sophie, and back again. "Invisibility."

She frowned. "I've an idea what you're about to suggest, George, and it's too risky by half."

"Only by half?" he smirked. "You're getting adventurous in your old age, my girl."

She threw him a look, but crouched down again, thinking. "It's only worked once, and it may not hold for very long. No offense, Sophie."

Sophie regarded them wide-eyed. "I am not offended, but that is because I have no idea what you are on about. Do you, Thèo?"

Her brother shook his head. George rubbed his chin uncertainly. "Protective colouration," he said slowly. "Camoflage."

Caroline fixed her eyes on Sophie's. "Sophie, you know I won't order you. Tell me what you think."

The Gallian's forehead wrinkled, and she looked away from them, fiddling with a hangnail. "I couldn't camoflage the whole group of us," she mulled. Then her voice got stronger: "But two or three, for twenty or so minutes, would be sufficient, or at least no greater risk than others we have taken."

Nodding, Thèo sank to the ground beside her. "I still have my Holmland army uniform. Would that be helpful?"

Sophie smiled at him. "That would be a great help. It would give me a chance to assimilate our clothing separately from our faces. Two smaller spells instead of one large one, which should help me to counteract the Principle of Cost."

Caroline could only marvel at Sophie's tenacity. After all, she was the only one here who had received no military training, who hadn't signed up for life-threatening missions. So she was riled when both George and Thèo pulled her up short: " 'Our'?" snapped George.

Sophie rolled her eyes just a fraction. "I cannot perform the spell if I am not there to do it," she pointed out bluntly. "I think we should split into pairs, two to take the ornithopter, two to wait. That way nobody is without backing up."

"Excellent thinking," said Caroline, unable to help the beginnings of exhilaration creeping in amongst her frustration. This was progress. "We'll run a repeat of our performance at Stalsfrieden, then, Sophie. An in-and-out operation, no diversions, minimal risks. If you take George's pistol there should be few enough problems. We should –"

This time the boys were in synchrony: " 'We'?"

Caroline huffed. "Unless I'm mistaken, I am the only member of our party who can pilot an ornithopter. Hence it has to be me to accompany Sophie into the Holmlanders' camp."

"I was learning to fly an ornithopter," began George, but she interrupted. "So you could take off at a few seconds' notice, in this inclement weather? And dodge the fire of the soldiers below? Then land on the edge of the forest to take passengers under severe time constraints? George, I appreciate your and Thèo's motives, which are all very well, not to mention impressive, quixotic and so forth," she barged on, taking some pride in her preclusion of this obstacle, "but I am still the only one of us who can operate the craft well enough to succeed."

This was met with two expressions of astonished outrage, and one comradely smile. Caroline ignored the former, turning to Sophie. "When will you be ready?"

"As soon as you like."

"Splendid. George, your revolver, if you please."

"I say –"

"_Your revolver, man!"_

With something that might - in quite a dark, and for preference smoky, room - have passed as poor grace rather than outright indignation, he obliged.


	5. Chapter 5

"'An in-and-out operation, no diversions, minimal risks'," quoted Sophie as they crouched together in a tussock of grass, surveying the Holmlanders' camp. "Why does that sound familiar?" She paused rhetorically, then struck herself across the forehead with a degree of sarcasm that was, to Caroline's mind, entirely unwarranted. "Oh, of course. Because that was what you said before we broke into the Stalsfrieden base, were nearly killed, and had to be rescued by a magical stone elephant."

Caroline glared. She took grave exception to the term _rescued_. "That was completely different."

"How?"

"All right, it was similar."

"Remarkably so, in fact. Quite surprising, how these in-and-out operations keep presenting themselves."

She cleared her throat. "Well, that means we've already had a dry run of this. Which gives us another advantage."

Sophie's eyebrow sprung up. "You mean to say that we have _multiple _advantages?"

Chewing absent-mindedly on a string of grass hanging foolhardily in her face, Caroline narrowed her eyes. "They have three main sentry posts on this side."

"Pardon?"

"Pardon?"

"How is that an advantage?"

Caroline, remembering herself, applied the brakes. "Three sentries, not one. That means that each sentry holds himself only partially responsible for the camp's safety. Since the Holmlanders aren't likely to be anticipating an attack from this side in any case, I'd say that means the sentries will be none too conscientious, wouldn't you?"

"Granted." Sophie seemed impressed, a fact which made Caroline inordinately happy, and only slightly guilty. "And, of course, nobody knows we are here, so we have the advantage of surprise," continued Sophie.

"Not to mention the fact that, these days, nobody is going to look askance at the sudden requisitioning of an ornithopter. If we can con our way in convincingly enough, we'll be over the Channel before they even realise something has gone awry."

"If the weather holds," Sophie put in. "Taking an ornithopter out in a storm might be a little indiscreet, no?"

Caroline glanced up at the beclouded sky, and muttered a generalised prayer to anybody who might be listening. "It's a chance we have to take. Since we shall only have twenty minutes or so within the base at any rate, things should have worked out one way or another by the time those stormclouds hit." She pulled back the blue sleeve of her Holmlandish uniform to examine her wristwatch.

Sophie craned over in interest. "What are you doing?"

"It's a diver's watch," Caroline muttered. "By turning the outside ring, one can see how many minutes remain until one's oxygen runs out. Or one's luck," she finished quietly. "There. Fifteen minutes."

"Twenty."

Shaking her head, Caroline rearranged her sleeve and took a calming breath. "No, fifteen. That way, when our time runs out, we'll have five more minutes' grace. You can't wait for miracles, Sophie, you have to make your own."

Sophie nodded jerkily. _Poor thing_. Caroline put a tentative arm around her shoulders. "It's going to be easy," she reassured her. She was lying through her teeth, but then, she'd always had a talent for deception. "I have already lost one person on this mission. I don't plan on losing any more. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," quipped Sophie, with which Caroline let her get away. "Hadn't we better move in then?"

Caroline swallowed, agreed, and hoped to high Heaven that she was doing the right thing.

Barbed wire, massive rolls of it, curling up towards the sky like spiny grey totem poles. That was all Caroline, head raised stiffly, could see as she marched through the camp. The rest of her vision was obscured by the back of Sophie's head, which was now thatched in eye-popping ginger bristles. Commendably, neither of them had experienced the slightest hitch in their plan to enter the camp, unless one counted the odd sensation of growing a moustache in four seconds flat, and it had been child's play to join a crocodile march of genuine soldiers passing the gate. As far as Caroline could tell, the only problem now was that they had no plan whatever for how to proceed. Were they less pressed for time, she would have recommended they lie low, assume entirely the roles of Holmlandish soldiers, and gather intelligence. Under the circumstances, however, corners would have to be cut.

A row of what could only be barracks unfolded ahead of them, and with them a potential plan of attack. Surreptitiously, she checked her wristwatch. _Twelve minutes. Plenty of time_.

Caroline was unused to placing trust in anybody or anything unless it was strictly unavoidable, as it seemed to be in this case. With a glance at the sergeant at the front of the line, she turned and marched straight for the door of the barracks, head still stretched upright to breaking point, back ramrod-straight. The principle of hiding in plain sight was old hat, so presumeaby it should be some cop in practice. Another set of crunching footsteps joined hers, and in the corner of her eye, Caroline saw the tall redhead following her. Resisting the urge to breathe an actual sigh of relief, she unlatched the door and they stepped inside without missing a beat.

Inside it was dark, with blueish-green drapes covering all the windows. Caroline turned to speak to Sophie, remembered their updated height difference, and adjusted for it. "Well done. That was excellent subterfuge. First class."

"Thank you," grinned Sophie. She had taken on a rather frighteningly long set of pearly teeth, which glowed in the dim light. "But why are we here? They must keep vehicles well away from the dormitory huts."

"Yes, I realised that. But this is the place where we are least likely to be disturbed."

"What do you imagine to do that an intruder would be disturbing?"

There was a groan, and a hollow call of "Who's there?" in Holmlandish from the far side of the bed-lined room.

Caroline pointed. "Interrogating _him_," she whispered.

Sophie's caterpillar eyebrows furrowed in alarm as Caroline nipped toward the man's bedside, flicking her eyes right and left, expecting trouble. She strained her ears, but as there seemed not to be any troops passing at present, the go-ahead was given. A human shadow half-raised itself from the gloom, hesitant, as though unable to summon the wherewithal either to fall back and lurk or to come forward. Keeping to the shadows, she was able to approach within a few feet of it. "Ahem."

The man turned, his face a swift picture of alarm, and managed to take quite a respectable stance of resistance before she was on him. _Foot to shin, elbow to jaw. Knee in back as he topples. Catch collar. _He grabbed for a water jug, but Sophie caught it up and hurled its contents at his face. Twisting the soldier into a headlock, Caroline was unable to avoid catching some of the water, nor wipe it from her eyes. Half-blind and blundering, she hung on as the man thrashed, yelling out. _Stay calm. Use your resources. _"Bedsheets. Quickly, please." Seconds later, Sophie had a length of white linen around the man's bare ankles, and, after some skin-of-teeth manoevring, he was roped tightly, propped against his nightstand. "Who are you?" he croaked. His accent might have been from Northern Fisherberg.

Caroline cast around and found a cloth, which she used to wipe the soldier's bedraggled face and hair dry. "Never mind about us," she snapped in what she hoped would pass for male timbre. "We need to ask you some questions."

Hiding from his duties, trussed in manchester and damp around the edges, this specimen of militaristic bravado and pomp puffed out his chest. "How dare you insult me so! I would rather die than give intelligence to spies!"

He'd handed her all the aces, but she tried to keep her moustache from twitching exuberantly. "Look at us, stupid little fellow. We are not spies. We are sent from headquarters to investigate shirkers and seek enemy agents. _You_ are cowering in barracks while your comrades help our noble cause." _Not too far_, she told herself, but she hurried on nonetheless, "So you will forgive us if we verify that you are truly one of our own."

"And once I demonstrate that I am?"

"Then we can forget all about this. _If_ you do."

Sophie, watching this exchange, cleared her throat meaningfully. "We have not got all day."

"Of course, my friend." Caroline nodded at her, hoping that her expression was convincingly assured. A glance at her watch showed that eight of their fifteen minutes had passed. "Now, Corporal -"

"My rank is Lieutenant! Surely you can see that?"

Caroline screeched to a standstill and backpedalled with speed. "Correct. I see we are not dealing with a fool, even if you may be a turncoat. Now, Lieutenant, where should you be working at this time?"

The man's bound wrists shifted defensively. "My superiors ordered me to work on munitions preparation."

"Yet you are here!" Sophie barked. She did a good job of capturing the stiff tones of a man used to seeing things get done with a minimum of drama. "Why are you not glad to perform your duties?"

Head bowed, he gave an all but inaudible answer. "Speak up," growled Caroline. Some of the growl was staged, some of it genuine. They only had six minutes left.

"I said I do not wish to risk my life arming bombs when I could be _using_ them on the Albionite swine!"

It took all of Caroline's self-control, and some that she summoned from elsewhere, to smile and say, "You have the fighting spirit, my man. Well, we shall see what we can do to get such a keen worker to his proper place of action. In the meantime -"

"You want me to return to the arsenal?" he grumbled.

"No -" said Caroline, a little too quickly. If he returned there now, and mentioned their presence - "No, your shift must be nearly over as it is. It would do no good for you to bring shame on yourself by admitting that you've been hiding here. You will be expected to return in time for your next shift, however." _Now, where was I? _"In the meantime, we need to audit some of your vehicles. Where are we to find your ornithopter airfield?"

In moments like these, critical moments, it was impossible not to imagine the worst - that her excitement had shown in her voice, that colour had shown in her cheeks. The soldier's second of comprehension and consideration seemed to stretch into an agonizing hour. To her right, Caroline could have sworn she heard Sophie hold her breath.

Then the man shrugged in a completely offhand manner. "On the west side of the camp. Can I help you in any other way, sirs?"

Caroline was on the point of declining and turning to leave as quickly as she was physically able, but Sophie had a brainwave. "Yes, Lieutenant. You could begin by saluting your superiors, which you have notably neglected throughout our little interview."

Astonishment flashed across his face. "Yessir."

"And as for your boots," she continued hard-headedly, "They are filthy! Clearly they have not seen polish for far too long."

"Yes sir. I polished them the day before yesterday, sir. I will make it my business to polish them every day henceforth, sir. I wonder if you could please untie me, sir? If you wish, sir?"

Sophie clicked her fingers at Caroline, who, after a moment of absolute disbelief, obliged. By the time she was finished, Sophie was striding towards the exit, calling back, "As for the state of your uniform, Lietenant, even an Albionite could do better."

Caroline strutted hurriedly after her, unable to choose between surprise, amusement and trepidation. Waiting for her at the door, Sophie was pale but smiling. "What now?"

"Now we go to the airfield."

"How?"

She glanced up at her friend's anxious face. "Through the camp, of course. If we look like we know where we're going, nobody can question us." Clearly unconvinced, Sophie started unhappily for the door but Caroline caught her shoulder. "You made a good job of that lieutenant, Sophie. Thank you."

Sophie pinkened, went to speak, faltered, then pulled a one-armed shrug. "I took my cues from you." She giggled, a strange juxtaposition with her burly appearance. "Had we not best be moving, _my man_?"

Caroline elbowed her, chuckling. "Military types really do use that expression, you know."

"Even Holmlander ones?"

"Even and especially Holmlander ones. Come on."

A raindrop landed on her face. She dashed it away. _Four minutes_. "The west side of the camp. That seems straightforward."

"Which direction is westward?" whispered Sophie in her ear.

Caroline pivoted on her heels, narrowing her eyes and groaning inwardly. "A good question. We should have brought a compass."

A blast from the battlefront echoed over them. In synchrony with the rest of the surrounding troops, she ducked, putting her arms over her head to protect her from the hail of dust and shrapnel that fell seconds later. In the following confusion, Caroline scrutinised the surrounding crouched figures for a compass. Surely _somebody_ must be carrying one. When nobody was, she experienced a queer moment of irritation at such a breakdown in typical Holmlandish efficiency. Then Sophie nudged her, holding something up. On the point of examining it, Caroline realised that they were the only ones not to have resumed their activities. Taking Sophie's elbow discreetly, she turned on her heels and set off in a random direction. "What is that?"

"A nail!" Sophie whispered in return. "An iron nail, I hope."

"Sophie, I appreciate the whole 'want of a nail' saga, but I really fail to see how that can help us -"

"Iron, Caroline. A magnetic metal! If I can enhance the iron's magnetic properties, and the nail's pointy nature, it will become like a compass!"

Caroline eyed her uncertainly. "Can you do that? In...under three minutes?"

Sophie nodded, though her eyes were far from calm. "We need somewhere out of the way."

"In here!" A shady gap between two long bunkers. They crouched in it, Caroline drawing her pistol and keeping guard while Sophie, holding the nail aloft, whispered to it.

It was never pleasant for Caroline to rely on something she did not understand. Now, in the thick of enemy territory, with a magical operator whose skills were mostly unexplored, Caroline felt even less comfortable than she usually did when somebody worked magic. When _Aubrey_ worked magic, she corrected herself. There was no point denying that part of it. She wondered, not for the first time, if he was all right. She wondered if she'd been as wise as she'd believed, in that moment of uncompromising cool-headedness, to let him and von Stralick go alone. After all, what did they really know about von Stralick? As the golem-Aubrey had demonstrated, their trust of him was entirely baseless. It was a chilling prospect, but a prospect that must nonetheless be entertained, she told herself. On the brink of trying to catalogue every piece of information von Stralick had ever given them, Caroline realised that Sophie was tugging at her sleeve.

"What is it?"

Sophie pointed to the gravel between them, and the nail lying on it. "It's working!"

"Are you sure?"

Nodding, Sophie twirled the nail, then let it fall. It landed pointing in precisely the same direction as it had previously. "That way is North. So -" she pointed to their right - "that was is westward."

Caroline breathed a sigh of relief. "That's wonderful, Sophie. Well done. Will the spell last?"

Sophie bit her lip. "It was quite a small spell, really. It should hold. But I think..." She trailed off alarmingly, and it took some coaxing to make her say, "I think my other spell may have been weakened."

This sank in slowly. "D'you mean the camouflage spell?"

Sophie didn't need to answer. There was a feeling, a sensory equivalent of the tiniest bubble's 'pop', followed by a sensation of relief at no longer having a moustache, and a consciousness of her stomach's sinking into her boots. Stymied. Heart pounding, she caught Sophie's eyes - her real eyes, blue and alarmed. She hoped her own expression was more reassuring, despite the microscopic likelihood of that being the case. A look at her watch showed that their protective colouration had lasted sixteen and a half minutes. If only they'd brought a compass. If only they had prepared an alternative plan.

_If only you'll stop whimpering,_ she told herself sternly. They were inside the camp. Surely that must make it easier for them to get to the ornithopters. She took a deep breath. "We'll wait until nightfall. In your dark uniform and my black suit, we ought to be able to get close under cover of darkness. Then if I can disarm the guards, we could get away."

"And Thèo and George?" Sophie asked. Her voice was noticeably higher, tauter somehow, than usual. "They will expect us back long before then. What will they do?"

Caroline could imagine only too well the kind of actions that their non-reappearance might inspire. "I fail to see what else we can do."

"I do," said Sophie unexpectedly. And before Caroline could stop her, she had emerged from the shadows and begun to walk through the camp, head raised jauntily. Resisting the temptation to stare, bug-eyed, Caroline followed. "What are you doing?"

"Walk like you know where you're going," growled Sophie under her breath.

"But I -"

"You are not a journalist, Caroline," Sophie sighed. "I am. Trust me." So for the second time in one day, Caroline bit her tongue and placed all her trust in Sophie Delroy.

Sophie led them to the west at a cracking pace. They attracted several curious looks, but the Gallian's stony face and Holmlander uniform worked wonders. Before long, a barbed-wire fence came into view, and beyond it, a row of five Hawk 62 ornithopters, the second-most advanced models to date. Eyeing the guards, Caroline clenched her fists surreptitiously, but Sophie stepped up to the round-faced private manning the gateway itself. "I am Nina von Rolff, Fisherberg Express," she said in clear Holmlandish. "I presume you have been informed of my visit to report upon the brave work of our nation's army?"

He stared at her. "No. I have not."

Sophie tutted. "Of course. Your commanders said they would not tell the troops. That you might become self-conscious." Astonishingly, Sophie directed a blinding smile at the private, who reddened.

He still seemed reluctant to trust them entirely, though. "Who is this?" he asked, gesturing at Caroline.

"My..." Sophie faltered for a horrible split-second, but recovered splendidly: "My illustrator. She is here to capture the essence of the camp so that she can reproduce it for the newspaper. No photographs, of course," she went on, giving him a confidential smile.

Caroline almost felt sorry for the young man as he went so red he was white. "Naturally, Miss von Rolff."

"Call me Nina, please. Everybody does."

From white to yellowish. "Nina. I am Ivan. Would you like me to show you the ornithopter facilities?"

Sophie's smile glowed brighter than ever. "Would you mind? That would be marvellous!"

Caroline could only goggle as Private Ivan unlocked the gate and bowed them through. That Sophie would bear careful watching. A couple of raindrops hit her skin, but she did her best to ignore them and the ominous faint rumblings that she was sure came from overhead, not from the battle artillery. She tried to stick as close to Sophie as possible as the private led them over to one of the Hawks, cudgelling her brains for the faintest idea of how to get rid of their overzealous escort without creating instant havoc and suspicion. Once again, however, Sophie was a step ahead: eyes glistening with well-feigned interest, she looked up at the beak of the closest ornithopter. "May I look inside?" she pleaded.

The man not only agreed readily, but offered her a hand in which, after Caroline treated him to a slow scalding glare, he proffered to her as well. As she climbed into the cockpit, hands itching for the controls, there was a lightning crack not far away and rain began to pelt in earnest. Private Ivan wrinked his nose, turning out his collar, and Caroline decided that this was the best chance they would get. She lunged for the ignition, commenced takeoff abruptly, and, without grace but with a maximum of speed, propelled the craft into the air. Sophie shrieked, clawing at a seatbelt, as they were propelled into the skies. "A warning would have been most welcome!" she called over the winds sweeping them, but a glance showed that she was smiling.

The shadows of the forest rose before them, and Caroline cut the engines to thud to a halt on the very edge of the trees. "George! Thèo!"

Their figures appeared, a quarter of a mile or so away, partially obscured by low-hanging branches and the water falling from the sky as though the weather gods had become really _enthusiastic_ about the concept of a deluge. One of the two - George, she thought - waved as the pair pelted towards them, Sophie waving back.

Caroline was scanning the sky, a difficult task with water flying in her eyes and cloud swirling feverishly. Several times she saw the corner of a distinctly ornithopterish shadow appear, but its pilots seemed to have missed the descent of their stolen vehicle, searching the skies rather than the ground below.

Panting, George was the first to reach the ornithopter's door and throw himself in, closely followed by Thèo. George gave a great shuddering sneeze, spraying rainwater and pine needle fragments all over the leathery interior of the craft. "You did it."

"Of course we did!" giggled Sophie, patting his elbow. "You were not _worried_, were you?"

"'Course not," George coughed, so unconvincingly that all of them laughed.

Caroline turned back to the stolen ornithopter's controls. "We have to go. There'll be a proper search afoot soon." Rather too brusquely, she initiated takeoff - drawing cries from her passengers as they scrambled for seats - and overjudged the space surrounding the craft as she engaged the engine. With a shudder, the entire roof section of the ornithopter was dragged backward while the rest shot upward into the air. The rain, which had almost contrived to slip her mind in the heat of the moment, splashed in with a vengeance - no longer content with mere gale-force strength, it was now a persecution. It invaded their jacket collars, their woolen trousers, their boots. It trickled down their noses and pasted their hair into their eyes. In defiance of gravity, it splashed into their downturned faces and soaked up their legs. Caroline's goggles were spattered, then fogged up, then formed a skim of ice crystals as she piloted the ornithopter through the cloud layer, focussing past the water-streamed windscreen at the grey beyond, then down at the compass card before her, doing her best to ignore the mortification at her ineptitude. One flash of lightning rattled horribly close to them, and only by chance did she escape clamping her teeth straight through her tongue in shock. A juddering thunder swept around the toneless mass surrounding the ornithopter; seconds later, they were through and drying out in the afternoon sun, the clouds stretching below them like a tumult of bath-bubbles.

Her sigh of relief turned to a shriek in the ornithopter's slipstream. Sophie, pallid but managing a smile, caught her eye from the co-pilot's seat - into the edges of which, Caroline noticed with a smattering of guilt and a good helping of exhilaration, she was digging her fingers, and seemed loath to let go.

Speeding over the battle, they swept toward the south, and Albion.


End file.
